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Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Very Powerful Video

I have been on calls dealing with families of the ones who have succeeded in their plans of suicide. I have had a hard time understanding much less explaining to them when they ask me "why?". All we could do in our job was be there and work with them in understanding what was happening with the fire department, police officers, investigators, coroners, pick the mortuary, paperwork, find family members or friends for support, and finally if none were found get social workers involved. We would be on those calls calls for at least 4 hours with the family. Working with the crisis unit was not a quick turnaround type of call like a regular fire department unit. It actually was created to help bridge a gap in community services and enabled the firefighters to concentrate on what they needed to focus on while we dealt with the family member's.

This is actually off topic but it brings up several points that I think I should bring up. I have come across several things that have created some situations that could have been prevented.

If you are in a same sex relationship and you are distanced from your family members, please have a power of attorney. We had to defer to the family members wishes despite the parters wishes because there was no power of attorney. I really felt bad for the guy.

Have a second set of ID somewhere on your person. It could be something as simple as your name written somewhere inside your shoe or inside your pants. We had to do a death notification on a missing person who had died in hospice, as a john doe, because he was mugged and never identified until weeks later. The detective was kicking himself all the way to the family's house about that one. He felt bad that the guy was never identified earlier.

If you are an officer, don't be callus when talking. Be aware of who is around you. I had a wife who was barely hanging on to her sanity. Her husband had arrived at the hospital as DOA and we were purposely not saying anything until we had gotten her to the hospital because we wanted to have proper medical people nearby. We were waiting for family to pickup her kids. She kept asking about her husband and we kept saying we didn't know and we will go as soon as her brother arrived. The dumb ass officer finally said "Oh, he is toast." She dropped to the ground in a dead faint before we could do a thing. I looked at the officer and went to kill him. My partner grabbed me before I could. Luckily her brother arrived just then and we took her to the hospital. She was basically catatonic the whole way.

This is a gross but necessary fact. If you have a family member pass away, get multiple certified copies of the death certificate. You will need every single one of them. Nobody wants photo copies. They will want original certified copies.